Two academic members of staff in Innovation North are celebrating after gaining recognition for their work.

Senior lecturer Richards Stevens, has been appointed chair of the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (IASIG) Game Audio Education Working Group. In this role he is to coordinate an international team of academics and industry representatives in developing guidelines for a curriculum for teaching audio for games.

The Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (IASIG) exists to allow developers of audio software, hardware, and content to freely exchange ideas about 'interactive audio'. The goal of the group is to improve the performance of interactive applications by influencing hardware and software design, as well as leveraging the combined skills of the audio community to make better tools.

A photograph submitted by lecturer Tom Jackson to a competition as part of The Darwin Festival has been highly commended by judges. The Darwin Festival, a major international event hosted by the University of Cambridge, marks 200 years since Charles Darwin's birth and 150 years since the publication of "On the Origin of Species".

As part of the festival, a photography competition was organised with the challenging theme - Images of Change. Tom submitted an image that was intended to capture the pace of life, visually illustrating how quickly it moves forward.

Over 100 entries were submitted to the competition and this image was selected as one of the final four, receiving a 'highly commended' award.

To find out more about the SummerSound Photography collection, go to http://blog.summersound.co.uk/2009/07/summersound-photography-highly.html.